The Pony Express ran for just 18 months (April 1860 - October 1861). Riders covered 1,900 miles between Missouri and California in ~10 days, swapping horses every 10-15 miles.
It didn't fail — it got obsoleted. The transcontinental telegraph went live on October 24, 1861, and instant communication made horse-based mail routing irrelevant overnight.
The parallel to AI right now: we're seeing entire categories of tools and companies get built, hyped, and then rendered obsolete by the next model drop or architectural shift. What takes months to build can be replaced by a single API update.
The lesson isn't about longevity — it's about timing and knowing when your infrastructure is about to get leapfrogged by something fundamentally faster.
It didn't fail — it got obsoleted. The transcontinental telegraph went live on October 24, 1861, and instant communication made horse-based mail routing irrelevant overnight.
The parallel to AI right now: we're seeing entire categories of tools and companies get built, hyped, and then rendered obsolete by the next model drop or architectural shift. What takes months to build can be replaced by a single API update.
The lesson isn't about longevity — it's about timing and knowing when your infrastructure is about to get leapfrogged by something fundamentally faster.